Photo by Jenifer McGill
All Saints Cathedral
The Bach Chamber Choir’s fall concert will be led by their music director, Jonathan Kim. This is their 55th season and will take place in the All Saints Cathedral, an historic landmark and architectural gem built in 1868.
The first half of the program is a Capella, unaccompanied voices featuring compositions by two English Renaissance composers, William Byrd and Thomas Tallis. The acoustics in this old cathedral will transport the audience back in time. What a great way to experience this music if this is your first time.
“All Saints' Cathedral provides a very resonant space that was just too irresistible for performing unaccompanied English Renaissance repertoire, says Kim.”
All the pieces are exquisite! The first selection is Byrd’s “Ave Verum Corpus” (“Hail, O Hail, True Body}). Byrd (1540–1623) was one of the most influential of the English Renaissance composers who for a long period of time was an organist and chorister in the Chapel Royal under the patronage of Queen Elizabeth I. Early on he composed and worked under Anglican aegis writing both sacred and secular polyphony for choirs and keyboard compositions for the virginal, a type of harpsichord, and consort (small instrumental ensembles). He produced sacred music for Anglican services, but during the 1570s became a Roman Catholic, and wrote Catholic sacred music later in his life. It was at this period when the kings and queens of England switched between Catholic and Anglican, making it “rather tricky” for musicians like Byrd.
Byrd was a pupil of Thomas Tallis (1505-1585). In 1575 he and Tallis were jointly granted a monopoly for the printing of music and ruled music paper for 21 years, one of a number of patents issued by the Crown for the printing of books and music.
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The next selection is Thomas Tallis’ “If Ye Love Me,” a sublime setting of a passage from the Gospel of John. Next is Tallis’ “The Lamentations of Jeremiah I, II,” one of the best known music works of the Tudor period.
Will the intermission provide enough time to travel across and ocean and almost 500 years from the somber music of Byrd and Tallis to the more upbeat sounds found in the second half of the program. Sure. ““But I also wanted to program beautiful choral literature that connects us to today, from 16th century England to 20th and 21st century America,” Kim says.
The second half of the concert can be described by the word “Resurgence.” There will be compositions by American composers, in some cases enlivened arrangements of old standards. Johanna Brahm will be the accompanist for the second half of the program.
It will begin Seth Houston’s “Stars I Shall Find” featuring John Burgermeister, bass, and Kurt Ohlinger, tenor. Houston is director of choral activities and associate chair for performance at the University of California, Irvine. Before that he taught at Carroll University in Waukesha, Wisconsin. The words are from a poem by Sara Teasdale, a Pulitzer prize-winning poet, who suffered from poor physical and mental health most of her life. Her poem, while written from a place of sadness, expresses profound hope for the future... a “world of my devising.”
This is followed by a traditional Appalachian song "Bright Morning Stars" as arranged by Shawn Kirchner. Linking “the beautiful, universal and "external” imagery of dawn and morning stars to the similar internal movements of renewal that we all experience. Joseph Smaldino, tenor, is the featured soloist.
Next are two compositions by Dan Forrest: “God of the Deep” and “Always Something Sings.” The latter is based on a poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson and will feature Carol Kennedy, soprano.“O Love” follows. Composed by Elaine Hagenberg, a contemporary composer of choral music whose compositions have been performed world-wide. Don’t be surprised if you sigh after the last note.
The final piece on the program is a traditional hymn by Frederic Rowland Marvin (1867), “Hark! I hear the harps eternal” as arranged by Alice Parker. This will be done a Capella.
If you’ve never had the opportunity to listen to chorale music before, this concert will be a perfect way to spend a Sunday afternoon. You’ll leave elated!
Bach Chamber Choir and Chamber Orchestra performs “Renaissance and Resurgence,” 3 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 20 at All Saints’ Cathedral, 818 E. Juneau Ave.
For tickets, visit bachchoirmilwaukee.com.
